Loglan 1 Updater: Decisions of the Loglan Academy

The Loglan Institute publishes in its journal, La Logli, a
cumulative summary of official changes to the Loglan language since
the publication of Loglan 1 (Fourth Edition). These
changes are decisions taken by La Keugru -- the Loglan Academy
(ke(rj)u + gru(pa) = 'Care-taking
group') -- and are published as a Sau La Keugru (SLK) column
in the subsequent issue of the Institute's periodical Lognet.
The purpose in reprinting these columns in La Logli, and now
here on the Internet, is to provide a single reference to all
official changes in the language since the publication of its
defining document, Loglan 1. This file is an HTML version of
the Updater published in La Logli 96/1; it covers the Keugru
reports that appeared in Lognets 90/1, 90/2,
90/3, 91/1, 91/3,
92/3, 93/1, 93/4,
94/2,94/3, and 96/3.

For convenience in consulting these reports, two alphabetical
indexes have been added. The first lists the Loglan words discussed
in the reports; since these are all little words, this index amounts
to an updating of Appendix A of Loglan 1. The second index
lists keywords (or nicknames) for the subjects discussed in the
reports. The first appearance of each indexed term in the indicated
report is emphasized in italics, to make it easier to find. The links
appearing in the on-line indexes lead to the paragraph in which the
indexed term appears.

[Bill Gober has prepared a complete new "edition" of
Appendix A -- all the little words -- including the changes described
here. You can find this list, sorted alphabetically, at: Appendix
A (alphabetical) and, sorted by lexical class, at: Appendix
A (lexemes).]

SLK 90/1 -- Sau La Keugru from
Lognet 90/1

The Academy has considered a number of
grammatical proposals from Stephen Rice. Most were accepted as is, or
with slight modification. Those accepted are as follows: ...'

1. Addition of gau as a
strong potentiality marker. The use of ga in such
sentences as Lo papre ga cabro to mean 'Paper is flammable'
had led to the mistaken notion that ga was being used both as
a time-free marker and as a potentiality marker in the strong, or
widest possible, sense (e.g., any house can be painted blue; water is
flammable in a fluorine atmosphere; non-swimmers can be taught to
swim). But Lo papre ga cabro does not mean potentiality in
this strong sense. It only means that this paper or some piece of
similar paper has at some time, under normal conditions, demonstrated
the capacity to burn. Likewise Da (ga) sucmi
means that X has actually demonstrated an ability to swim, or
has reported it (and is believable), not that X is actually
swimming now or at any other specific time. Similarly, Da blanu
hasfa means that it's blue if the light is right. Thus the
implication of ga, or of no operator at all, is time-freeness.
This is the sense of the Indo-European common noun: 'X is a
swimmer' carries no implication that X is swimming now, just
that da can swim, and does swim when the circumstances are right.
Using our new strong potentiality marker, Da gau sucmi could,
in contrast, be used to indicate that some X of whom Da
sucmi was not true was nevertheless a healthy human who had never
learned to swim, so that there was no reason to suspect that X
could not realize the swimming potentiality of the human genome given
enough water and instruction. As a further example of special,
non-standard conditions being invoked by the strong potentiality
marker but not the weak one, Lo cutri ga cabro is not true
even though Lo cutri gau cabro is. For water will burn in a
fluorine atmosphere. Similarly any house can be painted blue and
human non-swimmers can usually be taught to swim. Thus gau
enables us to make an important if fairly rare distinction between a
real if yet unrealized potentiality and mere time-freeness. Like ga,
gau will be a member of the PA Lexeme. We could say that ga
has no more meaning than the absence of a tense marker. Like that
absence, ga announces that the basic time-free sense of the
Loglan predicate is to obtain; and this is simply the sense of the
Indo-European common noun. What gau does is allow us to talk
(economically) about those kinds of potentialities that fall outside
mere time-freeness that red houses can be painted blue; that human
non-swimmers have it in them to learn to swim (but not to fly); that
water actually can be made to burn. It does for us what the '-able'
suffix does for us in English but rather more precisely.

2. Addition of five e-final
attitudinals: riekaenuefiedie, which will serve as register
markers, as in Japanese, to express the speaker's attitude toward
the referent of the preceding name or designation. These five CVV
words derive from the primitive predicates rispe, ckano,
nutra, fremi and dipri, and would correspond
roughly to such English name prefixes as 'Sire', 'Sir/Madam',
'Mr./Mrs./Ms.', 'Comrade/Brother' (as in societies, unions,
work-groups, etc.), and 'Dear/Darling' (as in families and
friendships), except that in Loglan as in Japanese they will be used
as suffixes: Hoi Farfu Die = 'O Father Dear'. These new
attitudinals will be freemods like UI and HOI.

3. Addition of a mechanism for handling
onomatopoeia ('shriek') and pseudo-onomatopoeia
('Surprise!'). Earlier the Word Makers' Council had suggested to
the Academy that some additional onomatopoetic predicate words zbuma
was the first one might be made, murmu = 'murmur', for
example. The Academy has accepted the principle of regularly deriving
certain kinds of predicates from the sounds of the activities they
predicate, and has opened a new category of O-Prims for them.
However, this facility did not cover the Rice proposal; so we have
proposed to Mr. Rice that adding two new words soi and
sue, analogous to lae and lue (once sae),
in that they involve indirect addressing, would serve all the
functions of his several proposals and do so in a way that was more
harmonious with the existing structure of Loglan. Mr. Rice has
accepted this suggestion and now joins us in the following solution:
The sequence soipreda in a sentence will now mean that
preda is not to be interpreted as a word, but as if the
speaker or writer had just exhibited the state or action that is the
referent of that word: soistari ('Surprise!'), soicrano ('Smile!'). Grammatically, these expressions will be
free modifiers, playing a role in the language that is very similar
to that played by vocatives and attitudinals. Using the new word sue
would accomplish the reverse of this. When used correctly, sue
will always be followed by a gesture or sound in speech, or by a
drawing or phonetic imitation in text, and this pair of elements sue
and its sequel will be treated grammatically as a predicate word. For
example, Le katma pa sue miao = 'The cat miaowed'. In speech
the sound can be made as catlike as the speaker is capable of
producing, and in both speech or text the right boundary of the
gesture, sound, imitation or drawing should be marked by a
pause-comma or by some stronger right-boundary mark.

The Academy also took the opportunity to rectify an old defect.
Others may have noticed that the Middle Loglan word sae
(circa 1977) was the only descriptor in the language that was not
l-initial. That was a mistake. But clearly the new soi/sue
pair were analogous to the old lae/sae pair, in
that the second member of each was the inverse of the first. So we
decided to rectify sae by making it l-initial, and, at
the same time, make it rhyme with sue. This gave lue;
so we now have lae/lue, soi/sue, and an
inversing ending, -ue, that we may have occasion to use again.

SLK
90/2 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 90/2

The Academy has accepted an internal proposal for an inverse
vocative, and has adopted solutions to the two ambiguity problems
discussed in Lognet89/1.

A vocative is a free modifier which identifies the person
or object addressed. An inverse vocative is a free modifier
which identifies the speaker, writer, or addressor. In English we can
say any of: I, he said, am going to the store. I am, he said,
going to the store. I am going, he said, to the store. etc. To
provide the same literary freedom in Loglan, we have adopted the
addressor word hue as the inverse of the vocative hoi.
Hue can be followed by either (1) a designation of the
addressor, or (2) a sentence asserting the act of addressing. Both
operands must be followed by gu. For example: Mi godzi
hue da gu, le vedsia. = I am going, he said, to the store.
Mi hue la Djan, clacue gu, godzi le vedsia. = I, John
shouted, am going to the store. The first gu following a
hue-expression marks its righthand end; so sentences
containing gu's cannot be successfully used as addressor
sentences. This is not a serious limitation, however, as addressor
sentences are normally very short. Both hue and hoi
expressions are free modifiers and may be used anywhere in a
sentence. [Later mention]

Note the phonemic parallels between lae and lue, the
indirect designator and its inverse, and soi and sue,
the onomatopoeia operator and its inverse (introduced in SLK 90/1),
and now hoi and hue, the vocative operator and its
inverse.

The solution adopted for the "LaPlace"
ambiguity e.g., /dapaGODzila DJAN.laPLAS/ which is hearable as
either (i) Da pa godzi la Djan Laplas = 'He went to John
Laplace' or (ii) Da pa godzi la Djan, la Plas = 'He went to
John from Plass' is to require that serial names in which
sutori (second or subsequent) elements begin with /la/, /ci/, or
/hoi/ be hyphenated with the interverbal hyphen ci.
Hyphenation of ordinary names (e.g. Bab ci Mykaivr) would not
be incorrect, merely redundant. To resolve sutori names which seem to
begin with sequences like /cici/ or /lahoi/ or /hoicila/ we strip off
the first syllable, interpret it as an operator, and treat the
remainder of such sequences as part of the name. Thus /laNED.ciCIyn/
= la Ned ci Ciyn = 'Ned Sheehan'; /hoiDJAN.ciHOInyhan/ = Hoi
Djan ci Hoi'nyhan = 'O John Hoynahan'; and /laCElis.hoiCIlys/ =
la Celis, Hoi Cilys = 'Shelley, O Shiela'. Thus the problem
case above resolves correctly under its interpretation (ii); and we
may now say /dapaGODzilaDJAN.cilaPLAS/ to convey the sense of
interpretation (i). As before, any other particle than la, ci,
or hoi before a name must be separated from it by a pause. [
More on serial names ]

The Academy also considered solutions to the "Protonynumcu"
problem. [The current solution to the broader problem of borrowings
in complexes (including protonynumcu) is given in SLK
92/3.]

SLK 90/3 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 90/3

An internal decision was made to
change the grammar of vocatives by removing them from the
<freemod> grameme and making them <terms>. This permits
considerably more complex vocative expressions, such as the one in Lo
Nurvia Logla in Lognet90/3. The Academy also decided
to accept negative register markers, as proposed by Stephen
Rice. An example of their use might be: Levi penbi no rie ga no
srite = 'This disrespectful pen doesn't write'.

In NB3:118, a reason
was given why sentence predicates could not have a kekked head
unit while descriptive predicates could. This led to some
undesirable inconsistencies in parsing. The Grammarian proposed a
change which makes parsing identical in both cases; this too has been
accepted by the Academy. Unless final in the predicate string, the
kekked predicate must now be followed by gu to separate it
from any following predicate words. For example, in ka preda ki
prede predi, the last predicate, predi, is the modificand
of prede, and so falls within the scope of ki. So the
whole expression will parse as (ka preda ki (prede predi)).
In ka preda ki prede gu predi, however, predi is the
modificand of which the whole kekked predicate is the modifier: (ka
preda ki prede gu) predi. Such expressions may now occur
in both sentence predicates and descriptive ones.

Letter opening, closing. It has
been suggested that an appropriate opening for a letter to John from
Bob would be Hoi Djan, the addressee ('O John'), with
the closing expression being Hue Bab, a reverse
vocative specifying the addressor (literally 'Said Bob').
Grammatically both are freemod utterances. [More
on hue]

Me + variable. A problem was noted with
Loglan 1:203 sentence 5: Lemi da gudbi letu de
('Mine is better than yours'). It was noted that the two free
variables da and de, which are elsewhere always
arguments, were here being used in a predicative way. Although the
grammar had been specially modified to permit this, the Academy
decided that the correct usage should be Lemi meda gudbi letu
mede, where the free variables are converted to predicates with
me. This was always grammatical, and the originally
ungrammatical nature of L1:203(5) has been restored.

SLK 91/1 --
Sau La Keugru from Lognet 91/1

The Academy has accepted a
suggestion by Stephen Rice that lio be allowed to take
non-numerical operands, e.g., predicates and names. The objects
so-designated will, of course, then be interpreted as numbers. For
example, the then-current grammar (#75) did not accept the MacTeach 1
sentence *Da skatidjo lio keigei because keigei was
being interpreted as an acronymic predicate, and predicates were not
allowed as lio-operands. When JCB first wrote this sentence
for the M1 input file, he wanted keigei to be interpreted as
an abbreviation of nekeigei, i.e., as a dimensioned number.
Following Rice's suggestion, this has been changed. The current
grammar (#76) now accepts both predicates and names as operands of
lio. Also, since not all units of measurement can be
unambiguously represented by letters, it is desirable to be able to
say things like lio nema dalra and lio tepife kilgramo.
We can now do so.

Another Academy decision was to accept the
kind of serial names which include predicates among their
terms: e.g., La Nordi Amerikas and La Krist Denli
(Christmas). In these instances, no comma is written between a
non-final predicate used as a name and the rest of the serial, though
a very short pause or glottal stop is necessary at such places in
speech. In effect, with this move, we now oblige ourselves to
recognize two classes of pauses in speech: (1) the very short
pauses that may occur within serial names, and (2) the normally long
pauses that occur at the right boundaries of serial names and,
indeed, elsewhere in the language. Speaking one of these normally
long pauses after Nordi in La Nordi Amerikas, or after
Krist in La Krist Denli, would result in the first
being treated by the parser as La Nordi, Amerikas ('The North,
O America'), and the latter as La Krist, denli ('Christ is a
day'). These types of names are so common in natural language that
the cost of adding a second pause phoneme to resolve them is
considered acceptable. [ Pauses
between letterals ]

Decisions are pending on several other proposals. However, the
informal proposal by Bill Gober in Lognet91/1 (page
5) that the -e ending of the ethnic declension be
awarded to a physical location, or one of the territories, of the
predi a move that was also suggested by Steve Rice has such
obvious merit that it has been summarily adopted by the Academy. [
More on ethnic declension ]

SLK 91/3 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 91/3

After more than a year of public
discussion and private deliberation, Dr. McIvor's proposal for a
general declension, one that could apply to nearly any
predicate of the language, (see Lognet 89/1:6) has been
withdrawn as involving too much re-engineering. The academy was
impressed with Bill Gober's "shoot the engineer" argument
in Lognet91/1:4.

We agree with Bill that our current objective should be to use and
perfect the language, not to re-engineer it. We were similarly
unanimous in our judgment that the animal declension also an
idea of Dr. McIvor's was worth adding. We concluded that it would
have very small effects on the affix system, and that its other
effects were probably benign.

As a result of our adoption of the animal declension, a generic
animal predicate (for any age or sex) will now always end in -u
regardless of its previous derivation. The word for the female of the
species will end in -a, the adjectival form that means 'like
(that species)' will end in -e, the infant form in -i,
and the male form in -o. Hence berci = 'lamb', berco
= 'ram', berca = 'ewe', berce = 'ovine', and bercu
= 'sheep'. Complexes can still be made, of course; e.g., ?junkasna
could well mean 'heifer'. Any CVC-form affixes that had been assigned
to the old predicate will remain in force and will apply as before to
the generic animal; e.g., horkarti = 'horse cart'. Where it is
necessary to make a sex or age distinction, as in 'heifer', the long
form should be used. Thus either ?cinkasno or ?menkasni
could mean 'baby bull'.

SLK 92/3 -- Sau La Keugru from
Lognet 92/3

A number of proposals have been considered in the past few months,
and decisions have been reached on most of them.

Jeremy Dunn has proposed a number of additions to
the tense system. The tense system is being examined, but no decision
has yet been reached on whether extensions such as Dunn has proposed
are needed. The specific words proposed were rejected as not
following the general word-forming pattern in Loglan.

A minor change has been approved in the
bracketing of go expressions by the parser, better to
agree with the definition of go in Loglan 1. [ Da
hasfa go balci la Djek. parses as da (hasfa go
(balci (la Djek))) instead of da (hasfa go
balci) (la Djek) ].

The Academy has clarified the use of hue.
When it refers to the speaker or writer, as in a signature, it is
used without a descriptor (as in hue Bab). When it refers to a
third person, it is used with a descriptor (hue la Djan, hue
le mrenu).

The scope of lao
has been extended to include foreign names other than
Linnaeans where it is desired to retain the original spelling, e.g.,
Lao Alzheimer, Lao Tokyo. The word sao
has been accepted to fill the same role for predicates (as in Lo
Nurvia Logla in Lognet 92/1 ). Sao is normally used
only on single words. In both cases the non-Loglan word or string of
words must now be terminated by a comma or a gu.

An operator for designating sets
by listing their elements has been introduced. It is
lau, takes any string of lexical elements as its
operand, and can be explicitly closed, when necessary, with lua.
An example is in the first sentence of our Lo Nurvia Logla in Lognet92/3. It is usually used for making lists of arguments. A word
to introduce ordered lists is probably needed as well, but has not
been chosen as yet. [Additional mentionof lauand luain SLK
94/3. ]

Until further notice, the Keugru
has decided to discourage the use of naked predas as answers,
as shown (here and there) in Loglan 1, suggesting that full
though shortened utterances are stylistically preferable. Thus, in
the interchange "La Djan, he?" "Da kapta"
is a better answer than "Kapta". The Keugru is
currently considering other ways of solving this clarity problem.

One of us (Steve) pointed out that we
have no way of pronouncing '*' to indicate an incorrect Loglan
formation. The word niu has been adopted as the
pronunciation of this sign, cognate to liu for single-word
quotation. Since niu was already assigned to the subtraction
operator, but was as yet little used, the word for the subtraction
sign was changed to nio and the corresponding addition
sign (formerly piu) was changed to pio.

NI+PO words. It was decided
to permit numbers (NI words) as well as LE words to be joined to PO
words, thus permitting structures like nepo 'an event
of', nepu 'a property of'.

Bill Gober has made a number of
proposals. Firstly, he objected to the three chemical elements
with unloglandic spelling (ytrio, yterbio, and
wlframo). On being reassured by a chemist member that it was
not necessary for the chemical symbol letters to occur in the word
for the element, it was agreed to change these to itrrio,
itrrbio, and ulframo.

Because of a subsequent
decision it was agreed that the letter y should never
occur in borrowings. So another element-word (dysprosio)
containing the letter y has also been changed [to
disprrosio?].

In Lognet91/1
Bill suggested adopting a set of affixes to extend the ethnicdeclension . This was tabled at the time as very limited use
was foreseen. It has now been decided to reserve a few currently
unused CVV-sets for use in extending declensions to complexes, should
this be found useful. Bill has suggested reserving the zeV,
ziV, zoV, zuV, and zvV
sets for possible declensional use. It is anticipated that these
declensional affixes will also be used with all types of
predicates, that is, with complexes and borrowings as well as with
primitives. The current animal and ethnic declensions will continue
to be used.

Bill suggests that a new
dialect of Loglan could be promulgated for use with beginners or
machines, namely one in which all pauses were replaced or
accompanied by explicit right-closures; for example, La
Djan, gu mrenu would be an utterance in this dialect. A beginner
could request da's teacher to use such heavily gu-ed speech by saying
Eo meliugu 'Please be gu-ish' or something similarly
suggestive. We accepted such explicitly right-closed speech as an
optional style that might well be useful in certain contexts.

The Academy is considering making
optionally explicit each of the numerous kindsofmodification intentions which occur with some frequency
between modifiers and their modificands. This might mean, for
example, putting some new infix x in Da horski xjanto when 'Da hunts on horseback' is intended, and some other
infix y in Da simba yjanto when
'Da hunts lions as prey' is the modification intended. Comments from
logli on possible implementations of this plan are welcome.

Two of us (Bill Gober and Steve
Rice) independently proposed changes (in Lognet91/3)
with the intention of eliminating the two-pause rule (introduced in
SLK 91/1), which we now propose to call a stop/pause rule. A
break between names, names and predicates used as names, or between a
word ending with a vowel and one beginning with one, can be a glottal
stop, and is written as a comma-less space between the words, as in
La Ailin or in La Djan Pol Djonz. A pause which is
grammatical, however, and which may be replaced by gu, is
always longer than the silences we are now calling stops, and will
always be written as a comma followed by a space. The proposals
considered did not eliminate all need for the pause/stop distinction,
however, and were consequently rejected, on the grounds that unmarked
forms are simplest, and should be allowed wherever possible. The
Academy agreed, however, that redundant hoi's, gu's,
and ga's would be considered discretionary, and not bad usage.
In addition, the form Le preda, prede ('The preda is a
prede'), while technically correct, would now be considered bad
usage, and that in human-to-human communications, the form Le
preda ga prede should be used. Likewise, in forms like La
Nordi Amerikas, a hoi should always be used if the final
name is intended to be a vocative, as in Godzi la Nordi, Hoi Djan
('Go to the North, O John').

Bill also pointed out that the previous Academy rule that
complexes with a borrowing in final position were not recommended was
unnecessarily restrictive. In the course of considering this problem,
the whole question of incorporating borrowings into complexes
was reviewed, and a new and exceptionless rule has been adopted. In
future, complexes which include borrowings will be made by linking
the whole borrowing to its neighbor(s) which may themselves be
borrowings, other predicates, or the short forms of primitives called
affixes, with the hyphen 'y'. Consequently, 'y'
cannot now be permitted to occur within a borrowing. This in fact is
the principal reason why *ytrio and kin must be disallowed and
respelled without 'y', e.g., itrrio. Thus, in future a
'y' occurring in a predicate will always be a hyphen, e.g.
milyamperi (composed of <mil(ti) + y +
amperi> and pronounced [mee-luh-ahm-PER-ee]), protoniynuu
([proh-toh-nee-uh-NOO-oo]), iglluymao ([ee-gll-OO-uh-mough]).
Since CVV-form affixes linked directly to a borrowing with 'y'
are interpreted as letter-word prefixes, the long form of the
primitive affix must be used when this interpretation is to be
avoided; e.g. santyinhuiti, not Saiyinhuiti; for the
latter means 'is an S-Inuit', not the 'silent-Inuit' successfully
conveyed by the former. [ See further
discussion of CVC complexes. ]

.You might have
noticed the strange double-'l'-ing in the word iglluymao as
the new way of making 'igloo-maker'. This is because Bill also
discovered that VCCV-form words are ambiguous when CC is a
permissible initial, as in *iglu. When certain attachments are
present, as in *adjayaspherage, ('Asian asparagus') the
initial /a/ drops off. These words have been proscribed. There
were only four of them in the dictionary, fortunately. When repairing
these words, we decided that if one of the consonants in the CC-pair
was 'l' or 'r', it should be doubled (thus, igllu,
akrre) and that the double-continuant thus produced should
join 'y' in making never-stressed syllables and so pass on its
stress to the preceding syllable; thus [EE-gll-oo] and [AH-krr-eh].
If neither consonant in the CC was 'l' or 'r', an 'h'
was prepended: thus *adja and *asne became hadja,
hasne, and so primitive in form. Consequently,
'Asian-asparagus' is now hadjyaspherage.

Randall Holmes has suggested the
addition of laa (Lo Lerci, Lognet 91/1) as in
Laa preda to mean 'the unique object of which preda holds (if
there is such an object, otherwise the empty set)', and lee
as in Lee preda to mean 'an arbitrarily chosen object
satisfying preda (if there is such an object, otherwise the empty
set)'. The Academy adopted these suggestions from our lodtua.

Randall also suggested a character quotation operator to be used
like the word quotor liu in syntax. He pointed out
that, as it stands, liu tei refers to the word tei, not
to the character 't', and that there was no way to refer to
the character 't'! The lodtua and the sacdou jointly proposed
that we also needed a way to indicate, when quoting, whether we were
referring to the spoken or the written form of the quotand. The
Academy considered its options and adopted lii for the
new character quotation operator, taking the phoneme string /lii/
away from the discursive meaning 'clearly' (kliri) in order to do so.
The 'clearly' discursive modifier has now been given the CVV form
rea, derived from frena. Rea had been
previously defined as the mathematical operator 'the root of', which
has been little used to date. This operator has been reassigned to
suu, a phonemic relative of sua, 'to the power
of'.

When a speaker/writer wants to differentiate between the written
and spoken forms of some linguistic string or element, da may now do
so by attaching one of the suffixes -zi or -za
to any of the quotation words li, lii, liu, lie
to make that distinction: -zi for the written form, -za
for the spoken one. Thus, liuzi Tai (/liUzi.TAI/) refers
to the written word "Tai", while liuza tai
(/liUza.TAI/) refers to the phoneme string /tai/. When the
speaker/writer is indifferent to the mode of delivery, as da will
most often be, da will still be able to use the unmarked form liu
Tai as we do now. Clearly, when these compound quotation
operators are used, they must be separated from their quotands by
pauses, as shown above. To quote the suffix -zi itself, it
must be separated from its quotor by a pause, e.g., /liU.zi/, for
without a pause, /liUzi/ would designate the written form of the
next-occurring word.

SLK
93/1 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 93/1

The principal subject being
considered by the Keugru at the moment is the handling of acronyms
especially distinguishing them from strings of letter-variables.
A tentative plan for restoring the TAI series to the set of variables
available for anaphora a group of words which we have begun to call
proarguments on the model of the English word 'pronoun' has been
provisionally adopted and implemented in a new LIP. Briefly, the rule
now is that vowel letterals when initial in an acronym, e.g.,
the [A] in [AFL] (henceforth we will use square brackets in this
column to indicate written forms) will now be pronounced in their
full three-letter VCV shapes. Thus [A] alone will be pronounced /Ama/
and the whole acronym [AFL] will be read aloud as /amaFAIlai/; for
the acronymic word is still a predicate and thus penultimately
stressed. [AFL] may still be written out as [AmaFaiLai], of course,
as a textual alternative, in Loglan, to writing it as an acronym.

We anticipate that the
one-letter vowel forms V may still be used to pronounce non-initial
vowel letterals in acronyms, pretty much as described in NB3:50-54.
Thus [Fe], the chemical symbol for iron, will probably still be
pronounced /FAIze/which is /fai+z+e/, where /z/ is the acronymic
hyphen and optionally written [Faize]; although the role of
hyphen /z/ is still under study.

In fact, the whole rule-set for generating acronyms in writing and
resolving them in speech has come under review. A satisfactory set of
rules will enable our ears to distinguish properly formed acronyms
from strings of letter-words in speech: [AFL] from [A F L], thus
leading the resolver to compound some strings of little words and
leave others uncompounded. As a temporary expedient, LIP is new using
a brute force solution to this problem and requiring that any two
adjacent letter variables be separated by a pause. Later, when
stress and disyllabicity are added to the information in the input
stream, LIP can use a more subtle and natural strategy for making the
same discriminations.

The resolver that will do this work for LIP is still being talked
about. So the Keugru is not yet ready to publish the new rule set for
the formation of acronyms as contrasted with variable strings, and
the production of both in speech. Please be patient with us as we
wrestle with this pleasant little problem. At the moment LIP only
accommodates textual input. Eventually we all want it to be able to
accept phonemic input as well, that is, a stream of textual signals
that accurately represents the acoustic structure of Loglan speech.
We hope to be able to report out a version of LIP which will be able
to accept this kind of input within a year. We believe it will be a
reasonably short step from the LIP that can accept a stream of
phonemes, and uniquely resolve them into Loglan utterances, to the
LIP that can actually listen to and resolve audible Loglan speech.

SLK 93/4 -- Sau La Keugru from
Lognet 93/4

We have a couple of migrations of CVV words to
report; and several minor changes in our morphological (word-making)
rules have been adopted. But the major news in this column is that
several new usages for expressing comparisons have been invented.

(1) The Keugru has accepted a proposal to
replace cue in the pair ge/cue with geu.
Geu is a better mnemonic for ge; and the ge/cue pair
is little used, so the change causes minimal disturbance.

(2) It has been pointed out that the
words svera and kin for things Swedish are illegal because sv-
is not on the list of permitted initial consonant pairs (Table 2.1 in
L1). The Keugru has decided to add sv- to the list of
permissible initials, thus legalizing svera and kin ex post
facto. -- This addition required no changes in our existing
word-list. If the proposal to accept sv- initially had
required changing many complexes, then it probably wouldn't have been
adopted. In general the Keugru is now doing impact studies to assure
itself that the changes it adopts have acceptably small impacts on
the existing structure of the language. Typically this means that the
changes it adopts are additive rather than corrective. However, the
Keugru is still accepting corrective proposals if the change required
in the current habits of our logli is negligibly small. For example,
the next change falls in that category.

(3) The case tag mao
(from cmalo 'small/-er'), which was originally intended to be
used for the lessers in greater/lesser than relationships,
confusingly reminds some people of the very common affix -mao
(from madzo 'make'). The Keugru has accepted a proposal to
replace this case tag with jui (from junti
'young/-er') on the grounds that case tags are, as yet, very
infrequently used and so there is still time to remove this source of
a potentially bothersome confusion.

The rest of this report deals with
comparatives and related topics, which the Keugru has been
wrestling with a lot lately.

(4) The Keugru has accepted a proposal to allow the creation of
categorical adjectives from predicates that are essentially
comparative. Many of the Loglan predicates that correspond to natural
language adjectives are essentially comparative: e.g., corta means
'... is shorter than ... by interval ...', meucli means '...
is more manly than ...' (although of course the sutori places are
often left empty). I.e., both shortness and manliness admit of
degrees.

The new convention allows these comparatives to be made
categorical or absolute; i.e., the quality is either present or
absent. The categorical form of such predicates is formed by
prefixing kle- (from klesi 'class') to the preda
or one of its affixes: klecoa '... is short (period)',
klemeucli '... is manly (period)'. Such predicates are, of
course, always one-place.

(5) The example word meucli ('man-like') '... is
more manly than ...' also illustrates a way of forming comparative
predicates with the suffix -cli from clika '...
is like ... in feature ...'. However, it's been discovered that the
-cli move isn't enough, because it uses just the first place
of the base predicate. Sometimes we need to express the first two
places of a predicate in its comparative form. For example, ckano
'... is kind to ...': ckacli '... is kinder than ...'
doesn't answer the question "Kinder to whom?".

To solve this problem the Keugru has adopted the
suffix -mou from the primitive mordu '... is
more than ... in dimension ...'. We adopt the convention that -mou
will always make a four-place predicate in which the first two
places correspond to the first two places of the modifying predicate
and the last two places repeat the relationship of the first two but
at a comparatively lower level. Thus, Da ckamou de di do = 'X
is kinder to Y than Z is kind to W' and Da framou de di do =
'X is more of a father to Y than Z is a father to W'. Commonly, one
or more of the places will contain the same designation: Da ckamou
de di de = 'X is kinder to Y than Z is to Y'; Da ckamou de da
di = 'X is kinder to Y than X is to Z'; and Da ckamou mi mi mi
= 'X is kinder to me than I am to myself'. The -mou convention
has some interesting implications for case tags. The Keugru is
considering these implications and will report on them in a future
Lognet. -- The Keugru is also considering whether to adopt
affixes, parallel to -cli and -mou, that compare two
arguments and find them equal.

(6) Loglan
currently has a modal operator which expresses equality. Ciu
(from ciktu '... equals ... in dimension ...') is
grammatically a PA word and means 'as much as/to the same degree as'.
The lack of a similar modal operator for inequality has been keenly
felt, and the Keugru has decided to change the meaning of the modal
mou (derived of course from mordu), which now
means 'as well as/in addition to', to mean 'more than/to a greater
degree than'. The Keugru feels that the UI-word sui ('also/
moreover') can perform most of mou's former functions.

The two PA words ciu and
mou now permit what might be called prepositional comparisons
for both equality and inequality: Ciu lo bludi la Mars, redro
= 'To the same extent as blood, Mars is red' ('Mars is as red as
blood'); La Sam, farfu mi mou la Djorj = 'Sam is a father to
me, more than George is' ('Sam is more of a father to me than George
is'). A word of caution: These modal phrases are sentence modifiers;
so they can make comparisons only with whatever is in the first place
of the sentence predicate.

(7) The Keugru is considering whether to adopt another
modal word for 'less than'. For the time being, all six possible
comparisons (including 'less than') are covered by ciu and mou
and their compounds: ciu equal to nociu not
equal to mou greater than nomou less than or
equal to numou less than nunomou greater than
or equal to

[Some of the
following Loglan sentences and corresponding English translations
differ from the text that was actually printed in Lognet 93/4. This
is because a careful analysis of <connective>+PA compounds has
persuaded the Keugru that the PA component should be given its
"prepositional" reading; only if the PA word is followed by
a pause (comma or scope-closure) can it be read as an "adverb"
(in which case it is still understood as a prepositional phrase, with
an implicit time or place designator as the object of the
preposition). This section (8) has been rewritten to reflect this
decision. In a future report (sometime in 1996), the Keugru will
discuss the principle of "elimination predicates" for PA
words, which will clarify this tricky feature.]

(8) For a long time, Loglan's grammar has
allowed compounds made from a connective (loosely, a
preposition) to form another connective. The first uses of this move
involved the PA words for time and space, e.g., La Meris, epa la
Djan, pa godzi le ckela = 'Mary and+before John went to the
school'. (They both went to school -- e -- and Mary went
before -- pa -- John.) [Approximately the same meaning can
also be written "adverbially" as La Meris, efa, la Djan,
pa godzi le ckela = 'Mary and+afterwards, John went to the
school'. (They both went to school -- e -- but Mary went and
then afterwards -- fa -- John also went.) But it's been
noticed that ciu and mou are also PA words and so can
also be attached to connectives in this fashion. Connective compounds
made with these comparative words allow the speaker to make
comparisons very flexibly, and between arguments occupying any place
of a predicate. E.g., Le nu balci pa harko mia lopo crina, emou lo
brize = 'The building sheltered us from rain and to a greater
extent than from wind' ('The building sheltered us more from rain
than from wind'). Note that the connective part of emou is
in full force here. The building provided shelter against both rain
and wind it was just better shelter against the rain. This means that
comparisons made using comparative connectives may not have the same
meaning as comparisons made with comparative predicates. For example,
for Da, emou de mrenu = 'X is more of a man than Y' to be
true, both X and Y must be men; Da meucli de = 'X is manlier
than Y' can be true even if neither X nor Y is a man. Comparative
connectives can also be formed with sheks and keks. E.g., Da fremi
cenumou matma mi = 'She's less of a friend than a mother to me'
(= 'She's a friend and more of a mother to me'); ('She's
friend-and-mother, but friend-less-than-mother, to me' = 'She's a
friend and more of a mother to me'); Da kemou fremi ki matma mi =
'She's both more-than-friend-of, and a mother to, me' ('She is both,
but more than friend, a mother to me'); or Da ke fremi kinumou
matma mi = 'She's both a friend of and less-than-mother to, me'
('She is both, but friend less than mother to me'.) In principle
these compounds can be formed using connectives other than e,
ce, and ke. To date, the few examples produced using a,
o, or u type connectives have been contrived, fanciful,
or both. The Keugru urges the Loglan community to experiment with the
other connectives, and to report the results of their experiments to
the Keugru or in letters to Lognet. The remarkable thing is that,
despite all these usage inventions and additions to our word-making
conventions, except for tweaking LIP to make it accept the shek and
kek comparatives, not one single grammatical change in the language
has been involved. The grammar of Loglan does indeed appear to be
settling down.

SLK 94/2 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 94/2

The Keugru has adopted a proposal for a change in morphology
(word-making). This proposal requires that any CVC-initial complex
be hyphenated at the first joint if the two consonants on the two
sides of that joint (C/C) form a permitted initial consonant-pair.
For example, paslinkui 'ancestor' becomes pasylinkui,
hyphenating the s+l joint, while the currently
prohibited *tosmabru becomes legal as tosymabru.
Borrowings cannot have an initial CV segment followed by a
permissible initial CC and so are unaffected by this change.

This change gives us two important benefits:

(A) It simplifies complex-building. Previously, in a
complex made from three or more primitives, a CCV affix was always
legal anywhere, and an initial CVV affix had always to be hyphenated
with 'r' or 'n'; but before this change it was hard to
decide whether an initial CVC affix was legal or had to be
hyphenated. With the change, that question becomes easier to answer:
if the two consonants at the first joint form a permitted initial
consonant pair, always hyphenate it with 'y'.

There are other rules for hyphenating CVC affixes which still need
to be followed, of course. For example, if any post-CVC joint forms a
double consonant, or a double sibilant, or a voiceless consonant
before its voiced variant, or certain prohibited triple consonants,
it will still have to be hyphenated. In other words, the other rules
for hyphenation at C/C junctions still have to be followed.

(B) Many more borrowings are now permitted. Slinkui is the
name of a common sort of attempted borrowing that was illegal before
this change because a preceding little word would turn it into a
complex. Thus *pa slinkui resolved as the apparent complex
?paslinkui. But the new rule makes *paslinkui illegal.
So with this change, slinkui and kin will become legal
borrowings. The Keugru probably hasn't worked through all of the
implications of this new rule, or some of its finer details. Watch
this space for future reports.

SLK 94/3 -- Sau La Keugru from
Lognet 94/3

The Keugru has adopted a number of
proposals since the last report.

Ordered Lists: The Keugru has decided that lou shall
be the descriptor introducing an ordered list, and that luo
shall be the corresponding terminator (if needed). Note that
these little words are very similar to lau and lua,
defined as the descriptor and terminator for itemizing the elements
of a set in the Sau La Keugru in Lognet 92/3;
the two pairs' spellings differ only in using 'a' for the
unordered list, and 'o' for the ordered one; this should make
the two pairs easy for speakers of English or a Romance language to
remember.

When should a logli use lau...lua,
and when lou...luo? In logical or mathematical
contexts, the difference between a set and an ordered list is clear,
and those who want to write on such subjects will know what to do.
But outside of formal contexts, we can use the set construction to
describe a collection of individual items as something we wish to
regard as a single (albeit compound) entity. Lau la Djan, la
Djein, la Djordj, la Djo'sefin, lua ga skuflo plegru. 'John,
Jane, George, and Josephine make a successful team.' Note that
this does not imply that John, Jane, George, or Josephine is a
successful individual, just that they are members of a team which
plays successfully. When we list the items in a set, they have to
be mentioned in some order because of the linear nature of language;
but the order of mention is not significant as far as defining the
set is concerned, and naming an element twice is unwise since it
doesn't actually change the membership of the set, and confuses the
listener. In an ordered list, on the other hand, the order of
mention of the items is significant -- the same elements in a
different sequence constitute a different list -- and duplicated
items are meaningful. An ordered list can be used for an argument
whose description is a particular sequence of individual items: Lou
la Arizonas, la Nevadas, la Ai'dyhous, luo ga rutma (sau) la
Me'ksikos, (dio) la Ka'nadas, (veu) site merke gunpai. '(First)
Arizona, (then) Nevada, (then) Idaho is a route from Mexico to Canada
going through only three American states.' Again, the predicate
applies to the compound entity, not to the individuals that make it
up. Nevada is not a route.

IKOU Now in
ICA Lexeme: The Keugru has approved a proposal to include
ikou-type words in the ICA lexeme, rather than the I
lexeme to which they once belonged. Sentences connected with eesheks
(ica and kin) form connected sentences, which can in turn be
connected with keks (ka...ki and kin) and vice versa.
When a word in the I lexeme comes along, however, it terminates the
preceding utterance, including any kekked sentence within it, and
begins a new utterance. So causally connected (ikou-type)
sentences could not be embedded in kekked sentences until ikou
words were moved into the ICA category. This has now been done
and appears to introduce no complications. For example, La
Djan, pa clucea la Maris, ikou Dai vizka la Mai, la Luvr; inoca --
Dai no norvia. 'John fell in love with Mary because he saw
her in (against the backdrop of) the Louvre, only if he's not blind.'
This sentence now parses with the causal connection inside the
logical one, which means that this causal relation is being asserted
to hold only if John is not blind. Replacing the names with
variables, the structure is now ([da {clucea de}] ikou [da
{vizka <de di>}]) inoca (da [no norvia]) Before this
move it would have parsed as *(da [clucea de])
ikou ([da {vizka <de di>}] inoca [da {no norvia}]) The
(odd) claim of the latter, however, can still be made with keks: La
Djan, pa clucea la Maris, ikou kanoi Dai vizka Mai, la Luvr, ki Dai
no norvia. 'John fell in love with Mary because, if he
saw her in the Louvre, then he's not blind.' This sentence
claims, astonishingly, that John's falling in love was caused by the
rather trivial logical relationship between his seeing something and
not being blind. Falling in love must be very easy for John! Or
perhaps the speaker is a logician, soi crano, who sees powerful
causes in even common logical patterns!

Scope of Quantifiers: The Keugru
has adopted a proposal of Dr. Brown's that the scope of a quantifier
marked with goi be specified to be just the atomic
sentence that follows. An atomic sentence is one which consists of a
predicate and its arguments (both of which may be connected forms),
but does not contain two (or more) sentences that have been logically
connected with eesheks or keks. La Djan, mrenu ('John is a
man') is an atomic sentence, and a simple one. La
Lindberg, pa briga ce famva mrenu go kincle fleti la Nuiork, la
Frans, napa sose nirne. 'Lindbergh was a brave
and famous man who flew alone from New York to France sixty-seven
years ago.' is also an atomic sentence. But La Sokrates,
humnu, inoca Sai morcea. 'Socrates is human, only if he is
mortal.' is a molecular sentence, not an atomic one. (Notice that
the generic sense of 'human' is now humnu. Ever since the
animal declension was added in 1991, see SLK 91/3, the 1982 word
humni has meant 'a human infant'.) It was discovered that
the Loglan Interactive Parser (LIP) already brackets utterances
according to the rule that the scope of goi is the atomic
sentence that follows it. That is, if one writes Raba goi, ba
humnu, inoca ba morcea. LIP will parse it as ([raba
goi] [ba humnu]) inoca (ba morcea) which shows that the ba
morcea phrase has been left hanging by itself outside the
quantifier construction. In order to apply a quantifier to the whole
of a logically-connected sentence (which is, after all, the most
common use of quantification), a kek-construction should be used; and
before a kek-construction, the marker goi is no longer needed.
Thus, if one does wish to say 'Everyone who is human is mortal', one
should now write Raba kanoi ba humnu ki ba morcea. Note
that sheks (ca-form connectives) and eks (a-form ones)
between predicates make connected predicates but not connected
sentences; so Raba goi, ba humnu, noa morcea. in which
noa is an ek, is analyzed, plausibly enough, as (Raba
goi) (ba [humnu noa morcea]) For all x, x is
human only-if mortal.

Me and Mea:
The Institute's Lodtua (Logic-worker) has convinced the Keugru
that there would be great logical power in more precisely delineating
the semantics of the predicate-forming little word me, and
introducing a new allolex mea of the ME lexeme to carry the
metaphorical, -ish-ish sense of the original me. After this
change, me will define a predicate, written me <argument>,
whose extension is the current designatum or designata of <argument>.
Thus Da mele mrenu = 'X is one of the men (I have in mind)'.
Presumably one would use mele preda only after le preda
had actually acquired current designata by being used. The logical
power of this new instrument is suggested by the example of se
menei = 'Seven n's' (seven of the ones that have been referred to
by 'n'), which is now distinguished from senei, which is still
a dimensioned number meaning '7 years' (unless, of course, nei has
been locally redefined to denote some other unit of measure).
Distinguishing between *se nei, which is how we once said se
menei, and the dimensioned number senei had become a
serious morphological problem; and the redefinition of me solved it.
If one wanted to say seven 'n's i.e., seven instances of the letter
'n' one would say selii nei [seh-lee-EE-nay]. (Notice that
stress is penultimate in these word-like phrases.) Much of the
former meaning of me (Loglan 1, p.232) is given to mea:
Ta meala Ainctain (/tameAla.AINctain/) = 'That's Einsteinian'.
Note, however, that in sentences in which the new me-constructed
preda is a modifier -- e.g., Ta mela Ford, tcaro --
me may still be used instead of mea because the predicate
made with me acquires metaphorical status by virtue of its use
as a modifier. In abbreviations of such remarks, that is, when the
me-ed preda becomes either a modificand or the only preda, the
explicitly metaphorical allolex mea must be used: thus Ta
meala Ford (/tameAla.FORD/) = 'That's a Ford'. The extra syllable
is the small price we pay for this new logical resource. There is the
hazard, admittedly, that absentmindedly saying Ta mela Ford
will mean something quite different, perhaps 'That's Mr. Ford/a Ford
company/a member of the Ford family/etc.' depending on the current
designatum of la Ford.)

Dui and Dua:
The predicate variablesdui and dua refer
to a preceding predicate expression -- dui, to the last one
back, and dua, to some earlier one -- and can be used to avoid
having to repeat a lengthy phrase. However, when that preceding
predicate expression is followed by one or more argument terms, it
hasn't been clear whether the predicate variable represented just the
predicate, or the entire <predexp + termset>. The Keugru has
determined that, indeed, the dui or dua are to be taken
as copies of the predicate plus its following arguments, except that,
if the dui/dua is itself followed by arguments, these
are taken to replace the arguments in the referenced <termset>
from right to left. Le ditca pa kejkao srite le kenti le tokri
barta. I le stude pa dui lesei papre. The teacher carefully
wrote the question on the chalk-board; and the students did so (i.e.,
carefully wrote the question) on their paper(s). Le ditca pa
kejkao srite le kenti le tokri barta. I le stude pa dui le retpi
lesei papre. The teacher carefully wrote the question on the
chalk-board; and the students (carefully wrote) the answer on their
papers. Le ditca pa kejkao srite le kenti le tokri barta. I le
stude pa dui le retpi bei. The teacher carefully wrote the
question on the chalk-board; and the students(carefully wrote) the
answer on b (the chalk-board). If the referenced predicate had
further unfilled argument-places that one wanted to make explicit in
the dui-repetition, one would generally tack them on at the end and
mark them with the appropriate case-tags. Ro pernu fa flemai
traci le jmikeosei. I mi dui sau la Bastn. Many people will
airplane-travel to the meeting; and I will (also), from Boston. The
place-structure of traci is '... travels to ... from ... via
...' . The first statement mentioned only the second or 'to' argument
le jmikeosei; to add the third or 'from' argument to the dui
statement, we had to use the case-tag sau (the mark of
sources/origins/points of departure) in front of la Bastn or
it would have replaced the second argument mentioned in the original
sentence, and therefore would have meant that I would fly to
Boston. Of course, one can avoid case-tagging altogether by actually
filling all the argument-places of the referenced predicate (with
replacements or with pro-arguments) and then appending further
arguments. If we had wished to do that in the last example, the
second sentence could have been: I mi dui jei la Bastn And
I will (travel) to j (the meeting) from Boston.

Ize, Izeci, Izege: Ize
has now been accepted as a member of the ICA lexeme, izeci of
the ICACI lexeme, and izege of the ICAGE lexeme. The -ci
and -ge forms play the same role in grouping their
operands as simple ci and ge play in predicate strings.
(See Loglan 1, secs 3.12, 3.17.) Logli will know that ze used
between predicates, as in Le plebarta ga blabi ze nigro,
creates a single claim about a mixed condition: 'The playing-board is
(a mixture of) black-and-white.' By analogy with this sense-mixing
and claim-integrating operation, when ize is used between
sentences, it generates a single claim that the two sentences joined
by it are jointly true, presumably at the same time and the same
place: Da pa felda le botsu le vlako, ize da pa bloda le hedto
le botsu. Inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako. She fell from the
boat into the lake; and (at the same time and place) hit her head on
the boat. Because of this (joint event) she drowned in the lake. We
can infer from this statement that it was the joint occurrence of the
blow to the head and her falling into the water the mixture or joint
occurrence of these multiple causes that caused her to drown. If she
had fallen without hitting her head, she would have swum to the dock;
and if she hadn't fallen into the water after hitting her head, she
would have regained consciousness in a few minutes. Notice that
ice treats the matter of the drowning quite differently: Da
pa felda le botsu le vlako, ice da pa bloda le hedto le botsu. Inukou
da pa flimorcea le vlako. She fell from the boat into the
lake; and she hit her head on the boat. Because of each of these two
events she drowned in the lake. The ice-connected claim is
that either cause would have been sufficient to cause the drowning,
i.e., that they are independent causes. Notice that we can expand the
ice-sentence into a conjunction of two independent claims: Da
pa felda le botsu le vlako, inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako. She
fell from the boat into the lake; and therefore she drowned in the
lake. and Da pa bloda le hedto le botsu, inukou da pa
flimorcea le vlako. She hit her head on the boat; and
therefore she drowned in the lake. The ize-sentence, in
contrast, because it makes a single claim about a multiple cause,
cannot be so expanded. ICA connections in Loglan group from the left,
so the passage above has the structure [(She fell) ize (she
hit)] Inukou (she drowned) If we wanted to announce the
unhappy result at the beginning, but still say that it was caused by
the joint occurrence of the contributory events, we would need to use
izeci to override the left-grouping: Da pa flimorcea le
vlako, ikou da pa felda le botsu le vlako, izeci da pa bloda le hedto
le botsu. (She drowned) ikou [(she fell) izeci (she
hit)] Again we have a single claim about a joint cause. We could
also use ikouge to accomplish the same result: Da pa
flimorcea le vlako, ikouge da pa felda le botsu le vlako, ize da pa
bloda le hedto le botsu. (She drowned) ikouge [(she
fell) ize (she hit)]

Reflexive Conversion: Also on the recommendation of our
Lodtua, the little words nuo fuo juo have been adopted to
designate reflexive conversions of the predicate to which they're
applied. They convert a predicate into a new one with one fewer
arguments, where the place of the omitted argument is understood to
denote the same person/object/abstraction as the first argument does.
Formulaically, Da nuo preda de di. means Da
preda da de di. and similarly Da fuo preda de di = Da
preda de da di; Da juo preda de di = Da preda de di da.
Examples: La Djan pa nuo vlaci vi le
vlako. John washed himself in the lake. La Djein fa
fuo takna leDai kicmu. Jane will talk about herself to her
doctor. Lopo nuo mormao ga po lidzao. Suicide is a
sin.

SLK 96/3 -- Sau La Keugru from
Lognet 96/3

The Academy has three matters to report this time, two Little Word
adoptions and a usage clarification. Several other proposals --
including the long-awaited subjunctive operator -- are very near
adoption, and will, we hope, be ready to report in LN 97/1.

1. NI+ro, The "Quality Ordinal"

In Loglan 1, there are two -rV-form suffixes that
attach to members of the NI lexeme to form "numerical
predicates". They are: NI+ra
...is a NI-some, a NI-member subset of set ..., e.g., tera lea
simbu 'is a threesome of lions', a cardinal predicate. (The 2nd
place of cardinal predicates was not recognized in L1.)
NI+ri ...is the
1st/2nd/3rd/NI-th element in series ..., e.g., teri le pazlia
'is third in the queue', an ordinal predicate.

The Keugru has decided to adopt a proposal of Robert McIvor's that
we form a third series of numerical predicates: NI+ro
...is the best, or highest/2nd best, or next highest/3rd
best/NI-th best/..../least best, or worst in quality...among
candidates/members of set...

We believe this suffix will solve the long-outstanding problem of
the "superlative" in an elegant and yet easily understood
way.

The most commonly used member of the new -ro series will,
of course, be nero, which means 'first in
quality/value/rank/significance/importance ... among ...'. Toro
therefore means 'second in quality, etc.'; tero, 'third in
quality, etc'; and so on, down to raro, which, surprisingly
enough, means 'least/worst in quality, etc.', since, with -ro,
we are, in effect, "counting down".

Grammatically, the NI+ro words are predicates. So, when
used to modify another predicate, nero, for example, forms the
superlative of the attribute denoted by that predicate in that
candidate set; toro, the next highest in that quality in that
set; and so on. Obtaining the superlative expressions made so easily
with nero was, in fact, the main motivation for adopting this
new form, since no other formulation of the superlative that was both
easy to understand and logically manipulable had ever been found.

In general, the new -ro forms are intended to express the
degree to which some qualitative attribute is judged to apply in some
set of candidates ('bluest, highest, sweetest, best'), and this will
contrast with the ordinal positions of elements in well-defined
linear series, such as sequences of numbers or people standing in
line. These older ordinals will, of course, still be expressed by
predicates made with -ri.

While words made with -ra and -ri are two-place
predicates, the new ones made with -ro will have three places.
Thus, considered in full, NI+ro means '... is NI-th in quality
... among candidates/members of candidate set ...'. Mu
nero! is therefore a meaningful utterance, though an incomplete
one, and expresses the sports fan's boast: 'We're Number 1!' Used in
a two-place expression -- and so still incompletely -- nero
can express the preposterous claim Mi nero raba! 'I'm best at
everything!' The complete form, though probably rarely used, will
specify the candidate-set as well as the property: Da toro lopu
pligudbi guo lea hasfa ji napa nu sifdui mi. = 'X is the
second best in suitability among the houses found by me'. Much of the
grammatical elaborateness can be avoided, of course, by using the
NIro word as a predicate modifier.

Since NIrois a predicate word, it functions like an
English adjective when it modifies a noun-like predicate, as in La
Djan, tero prozymao = 'John is a third-rate author'. It is also
capable of serving as an adverb when it modifies an adjective-like
one: Le tero gudbi kruma je le hotle = 'The third-best
room in the hotel'. We can even compress all three places of a NIro
predicate into a predicate string by using it as an early modifier:
Da bi le toro pligudbi ge hasfago nu sifdui je mi = 'X
is the second most suitable house I've found'. [The
current LIP is still reading neroas NI, so it
will not parse this sentence properly. A new LIP, with NIro
lexed as PREDA, is on its way. -- JCB]

The second place of NIro is also likely to be frequently
used, as it denotes not candidates -- who, in English at least,
usually remain in the background -- but the property in which this
qualitative ranking is being made. Here's an interesting example from
Americana: La Djordj Uacintyn, pa nero lepo dorja, e lepo pismi, e
lo karci je loUma samguidjo. 'George Washington was first in war,
(first) in peace, and (first) in the hearts of his countrymen'.
And with nero we can at last translate that sad old saying --
well-known among short-lived computer companies -- Lo neri kristni
pa jmite lo nero simbu. = 'The first Christians got the best
lions'.

Finally, like the other numerical-predicate suffixes, -ro
can be applied to non-numeric quantifiers as well. Thus raro,
rero, riro, roro, ruro, saro,
siro, and suro are all well-defined (L1, 4.23
p.214). For example, ruro redro means 'sufficiently red' (in
that candidate set), and, as we have already noted, raro
must denote the final -- or "allth" -- element in some
quality-series, and so must mean the lowest value of the
quality in question to be found among these particular candidates.
E.g., Le raro hapci stude je le ckela.= 'The least
happy student at the school'.

In short, -ro offers the adventurous logli a very rich
semantic domain to explore.

2. NI+cu, The Indefinite
Set Descriptor

In his recent study of sets and multiples, JCB turned up an
awkward gap in our designative apparatus. While Loglan 1, 4.23
p.216 provides for a kind of numerical description through the use of
unmarked NIs before predicate expressions -- Ne mrenu 'A
man/Exactly one man', Ri mrenu 'Some several men'. Toni
mrenu 'Some twenty men'. -- these descriptions are all
"indefinite" in that the speaker by using them indicates
that s is not prepared to identify the individuals so designated.
These "naked NI"-forms contrasted very handily with the
"definite descriptions" made with Le -- Le ne
mrenu 'The one man I mean', Le ri mrenu 'The several men I
have in mind', Le toni mrenu 'The twenty men I have in mind'
-- by using which, s indicates that s is willing to
identify their designata.

But both NI-forms and Le NI-forms, when plural, apply to
multiples. When we look for corresponding ways to designate sets,
we find that we have only definite set description with Leu
at our disposal; no indefinite way of describing sets existed. We
could say Leu toni mrenu 'The set of twenty men I have in
mind' but we could not say (briefly) 'A set consisting of some twenty
men'. But suppose an L- speaker does want to say something like the
E-speaker manages to suggest with 'A couple of', as in 'A
couple of men moved the piano'. It's clear from the physics of
this situation that s is talking about a set, not a multiple.
(Multiples of men do not move pianos!) It's also clear from
the offhand tone of 'A couple of ...' that s probably can't, or at
least won't, divulge the identify of the two members of this
piano-moving pair.

In Loglan we must be clear about such logical matters. But when
JCB first noticed this gap -- whilst working with Alex Leith on A's
"A First Visit to Loglandia" -- there was no
indefinite set descriptor in the language ... no way to say 'A couple
of' in that compact and yet conveniently offhand way.

The same structural point can be made by putting our 1995
descriptors in a 2x2 table. On 1 January 1995 only three of its four
cells had entries:

Multiples

Sets

Definite

Le to...

Leu to ...

Indefinite

To ...

??? (Tocu)

After much discussion and several mind-changes -- for, though
there was no indefinite set-descriptor, there are many circumlocutory
ways of filling cell 2,2 -- the Keugru decided (a) that such "logical
gaps" in the operator sets of Loglan must, when discovered, be
filled, and (2) that, of the available suffixes, adding -cu to
NI was the best way to fill this one.

If you will mentally replace those '???' in Cell 2,2 with Tocu,
you will see that Tocu fits the pattern of its row and column
neatly. It has the final /u/ of Leu (indicating set-hood), and
the leading NI of NI itself (indicating indefiniteness).

Why not use the suffix -u, which would yield a perfect
row-and-column symmetry? Because numerous NI+u forms already
exist, starting with neu, a case tag. But granting that we do
need an intervening consonant, why use /c/ and not some other?
Because /c/ already suggests a kind of "single-letter hyphen",
and /c/ was the only C of those available that did not suggest
something else. Thus, /r l z/ were also available; but all these Cs
had strong conflicting associations with something else. So we judged
/c/ to be the best ... the nero in this set of candidates.

Logli will not, we predict, have very much trouble using the new
NIcu descriptors. Correct usage depends on handling two
distinctions: one between sets and multiples, the other between
definiteness and indefiniteness. As a useful mnemonic, the E phrase
'A couple of ...', as applied to piano-movers, calls up both. There
were a couple of them ... the neighbor noticed that; but she
certainly doesn't know where to find them now. But something
moved that piano, and that something was a set. So what we need here
is the indefinite set-descriptor we have just invented, in short, the
NI+cu word made with to. The case is strictly parallel
to saying 'A cigar-smoker was in here' on smelling cigar-smoke in a
room. The piano has been moved; it's no longer here. A neighbor tells
us that "a couple of men" came by. The set-multiple
distinction is not difficult to make; the definite-indefinite
distinction is even easier. We make both all the time in English ...
although often by irregular means, and so we're often unaware we're
doing so. In L, we can now make both distinctions regularly. All
cells are filled. So we can now say Tocu mrenu pa muvmao le
pianfa.

Here's a few more examples from the four cells of our table,
first, a couple of definite descriptions, one of a multiple and one
of a set:

Note that these last two forms contrast very sharply with definite
set descriptions:

Leu ro mrenu hutri le prenyhaa.The set/mob of men (I
have in mind or have been describing) destroyed the jail.

Lo miatci fa nu cmiza leu te muzkao.The diners will be
entertained by the trio of musicians (whom I have in mind and can
identify).

These are, to be sure, subtle distinctions ... usually not made
explicitly by English-speakers. Indeed, in E we are often quite
unaware that we are talking about four quite different sorts of
logical objects when we use plural descriptive forms. But all four
cells generated by these two binary distinctions -- the set-multiple
one, and the definite-indefinite one -- must be explicitly labeled in
our logical language if it is to encourage us -- perhaps even to
teach us! -- to handle all descriptive categories deftly and well.

3. The
Distinctness/Indistinctness of Sets of
Non-Designating Variables:

A convenient Loglan invention is the use of non-designating
variables (ba, be, bo, bu) to translate
"There is/are"-phrases: Ba kangu vi le hasfa
= 'Something x is(being) a dog in the house (There's a dog in
the house)'.

The question came before the Keugru whether, hearing a sentence
that deploys two such variables, the listener must assume that
they refer to two distinct individuals. Probably lei should
assume that. After all, the speaker has used two of these
variables when s could have chosen to repeat the use of one. Why
would s involve s-self in this extra effort unless s had two distinct
(though indefinite) individuals in mind?

But that's not the question that logicians are inclined to raise.
Their question is whether one must make this assumption. In
other words, is it legitimate to transform any be in a string
... ba ... be ... into be noji ba ('y not
identical to x')?

For plain speakers, this problem does not often arise ... mainly
because the non-designating variables usually appear in different
argument positions of a predicate, or in any case, could not refer to
the same individual because of real-world considerations. But
consider something like this:

The minimal claim of this pair of sentences is that there was at
least one reader x in the waiting-room, and there was at least
one smoker y there, too. The Keugru affirms that, consistent
with symbolic-logic practice, the two non-designating variables ba
and be need not refer to two distinct
individuals...although of course they may do. Indeed they
often do (else, we repeat, why would s use two variables when,
in Loglan, s could as easily repeat the use of one?). But, speaking
logically, we must admit that there can be just one
individual i in that waiting-room, and, provided i is both reading
and smoking, the fact that there is only one such person there will
not falsify s's claim. That is, it is possible (though
unlikely) that x = y; and logicians -- if not other
people, soi crano -- must take this possibility into account.

To specify that the references of two non-designating variables
are to be understood as distinct -- as in 'I saw something, and, a
little later, heard something else' -- just use noji, a
variant of JI that LIP does not yet recognize but is on its way: Mi
pa vizka ba, epaza, pa hirti be noji ba = 'I saw something x,
and (that was) shortly before (I) heard something y-not-x'.
Then all doubt vanishes. You are indeed talking about "something
else". And your logician friends will applaud you for being
utterly clear about it.

-- Hue Krk Satlis, ze Djim Braon

Keugru Proposal 13/2, approved
by la Keugru, August 2013

This is the first official ruling of the Loglan Academy as
reconvened in July 2013.

Repeated vowels aa/ee/oo are forbidden to occur in borrowings. The
rationale is that the primary stress of a predicate containing such a
borrowing as a component must then lie on one of these two vowels,
which would strongly restrict where the borrowing could occur in a
complex. The only borrowing in which this occurred was alkooli,
which is quite naturally revised to alkoholi as
part of the proposal.

Keugru Proposal 13/1, approved by la
Keugru, August 2013

This modifies the proposal in SLK 94/2. A CVC affix initial in a
complex which makes a permissible initial consonant-pair with the
following consonant must by y-hyphenated, except when the
complex is of the shapes CVCCCV or CVCCVV (this is the change).
Further, CCVV
borrowings remain forbidden. The
dictionary is in full compliance with this proposal already, which
strongly suggests that this was the intent of the 94/2 ruling anyway;
without this ruling, it would have been necessary to y-hyphenate
hundreds of complexes of those two six-letter forms. Note that the
slinkui test is still abolished (which is just as well as there are
several slinkui words in the dictionary, all from before 1994).

Keugru
Proposal 13/9, approved
by la Keugru, August 2013

The form (name gap) is no longer
an allowed form for a vocative: names used as vocatives must be
marked with hoi. This
averts many possible misreadings of name words: a vocative, being a
freemod, can appear almost anywhere, so any unmarked occurrence of a
name word (as for example, sutori components of serial names) was in
danger of an unintended reading as a vocative.

Keugru
Proposal 13/8, approved
by la Keugru, June 2014

Predunits occurring as items in serial names must be marked with ci. There is once again just a single pause phoneme. This eliminates the potential confusion between la Djan Blanu (John the Blue) [now la Djan ci Blanu] and la Djan, blanu (John is blue), which was resolved earlier by providing for a shorter pause phoneme in serial names. It should be noted that the current provisional parser implements proposals for further related tweaks to the serial name construction.